Universities of the United Kingdom: numbers growing, visions venerable and visions variable

Setting out the development, history and underlying values a country seeks to have its universities reproduce, is delicate, complex and challenging. This account explores the major changes which took place over the past century and shaped the universities of the United Kingdom. Particular attention is paid to the growing weight which in the course of the past three decades, public administration brought to bear upon both evaluating individual institutional performance and the quality-of-service British universities are nowadays expected to provide their students in return for the substantial fees they are now expected to invest in themselves. Unlike Britain’s one-time European partners, the drive to add to the four or so universities in Scotland and the two English establishments of Oxford and Cambridge was far from being an extension of state power. It was, on the contrary, a demand to extend university education to ambitious and rising economic and industrial communities.